/*
 *  Copyright (c) WSO2 Inc. (http://www.wso2.org) All Rights Reserved.
 *
 *  WSO2 Inc. licenses this file to you under the Apache License,
 *  Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
 *  in compliance with the License.
 *  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */

package org.wso2.balana;

import org.wso2.balana.ctx.EvaluationCtx;

/**
 * Represents the TargetType XML type in XACML. This defined as abstract,
 * because there can be more than one implementation of TargetType. As an
 * example, TargetType is considerably defer in XACML 2.0 and XACML 3.0
 * Therefore two implementations are used.
 * 
 * The target is used to quickly identify whether the parent element (a policy
 * set, policy, or rule) is applicable to a given request.
 */
public abstract class AbstractTarget {

	/**
	 * Determines whether this <code>AbstractTarget</code> matches the input
	 * request (whether it is applicable).
	 * 
	 * @param context
	 *            the representation of the request
	 * 
	 * @return the result of trying to match the target and the request
	 */
	public abstract MatchResult match(EvaluationCtx context);

}
